AlterNet - Why the religious beliefs of Trump's Cabinet nominees matter

The Conversation
December 12, 2024

The most serious allegations against Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick to head the U.S. Department of Defense, involve mismanagement, heavy drinking, infidelity, sexual harassment and even rape.

Hegseth denies the allegations but also claims that because of Jesus he’s a “changed man.” The roots of Hegseth’s version of Christianity are worth a look as he heads into confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate in January 2025.

In 2023, Hegseth moved from New Jersey to Tennessee to join a church and school community that arises from a 20th-century movement, called Christian Reconstruction. It holds deeply conservative views about the family, roles for women, and how religion and politics are related.

The followers of the movement seek to make America a Christian nation, by which they mean a nation built on biblical law, including its prohibitions and punishments.

Christian Reconstructionists want to dismantle public education and replace modern ideas about family with a patriarchal family model because they claim that biblical law requires both. They believe that Old Testament biblical law applies to today’s society and to everyone, whether or not they are Christian. For them, all of life is religious; there is no separation between religion and politics.

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